Almost as old as literature itself is the concept of the sequel. The great commercial success of the Iliad no doubt compelled Homer to hurriedly produce his Odyssey. Certainly, there would be no New Testament were it not for the widespread popularity of its Old counterpart. Modern Times™ gives us such franchises as Lord of the Rings and Star Wars — not to mention the Bill Cosby vehicle Leonard Part 6, whose creators ingeniously skipped parts one through five to give the impression of a successful run of films.

Lest the reader think even for a moment that NotGraphs is immune to the sequel, think not that, reader. For, with the widespread excitement surrounding yesterday’s post exploring the similarities between American ubermenschen Tommy Hanson and Timothy Busfield, we’ve not been able to restrain ourselves.

Accordingly, we offer you the above, a comparative study between Met knuckleballer R.A. Dickey and a Danny Concannon-era Tim (né Timothy) Busfield.

Is it as powerful a work as our original Busfield Lookalike post? That’s not for me to say, reader. But these bills for Cristal by the case and suites presidential or otherwise — they aren’t paying themselves, is what I mean to say.

Total noogie to Joe Pawlikowski for reasons I’m not at liberty to share.

Sometimes, great accomplishments are the product of ceaseless toil. Othertimes, they spring forth effortlessly and fully formed from their creator.

The image you see above is the latter kind of great accomplishment.

Here we see two men: one, Atlanta Brave starter Tommy Hanson; the other, actor Timothy Busfield of Thirtysomething and West Wing and Revenge of the Nerds and Field of Dreams fame.

Here’s the thing, though: it’s impossible to tell which is which. Is that Timothy Busfield catching a fish? Is that a headshot of Tommy Hanson? We just don’t know.

I know what you’re saying. You’re saying, “Carson, it actually isn’t that hard to tell. Sure, both of these men have red hair, but they have different enough facial structure, hairlines, etc. that I can tell pretty easily who’s who.”

Humility, reader: practice it. That’s the purpose of what I’m saying now.

H/T Me and my thoughts.

Click to embiggen… your dreams.

I don’t watch a ton of Pirates games, so I’m no authority on the matter, but, if memory serves, Andrew McCutchen looks less, uh, European in person than on his Yahoo player page.

UPDATE: As of 6:12pm ET, Yahoo appears to’ve changed the image to one much more closely resembling the Pirates’ starting center fielder.

Top Gun-style embrace for my friend Joel.

Shhh, don’t speak.

Showing an acuity of taste that has become his trademark, my colleague, Mr. Navin Vaswani, elected today to revisit a too-neglected category of posts here at NotGraphs, Great Moments in Spectacles, treating all of us to an image of former Rookie of the Year and Notable Spectacle-Wearer Bob Hamelin.

In this edition of Great Moments of Spectacles, the internet has revealed the image you see skilfully embedded above — namely, an photo of a bespectacled Dick Allen (a person of interest here at NotGraphs) doing his best to lay asunder Indians infielder Luis Alvarado circa August 1974.

I believe I’m speaking the truth when I say that, like a canvas by Pieter Bruegel (Elder or Younger, take your pick), the extent of this image can’t be entirely apprehended in one sitting.

Image courtesy of Dick Allen Hall of Fame via Big Hair and Plastic Grass.

Early in January, we took a moment out of our busy schedules to appreciate some of the accidental, or pocket, tweets from Mr. Peter Gammons (@pgammo).

Four months later, the man whom no one has ever called George Plimpton for the 21st Century continues to refine his craft.

Below are five notable contributions to the genre of the pocket tweet — all from the past month.

5. This is from today, actually, and features one of the hardest letters to find while playing the Alphabet Game on a road trip.

Read the rest of this entry »

Courtesy of your attractive friends at Wieden+Kennedy, it’s the newest This Is SportsCenter spot, featuring Jason Heyward, Steve Levy, Scott Van Pelt, and a costume tree.

Secret NotGraphs handshakes for Ted Walker and gondee of Talking Chop.

Take it slow with Ted Danson.

Last week, FanGraphs’ House Librarian Steve Slowinski submitted for the readership’s consideration a post entitled How to Speak Sabermetrics to a Mainstream Audience, in which he (i.e. Slowinski) provided some guidelines for discussing sabermetric concepts with the uninitiated.

While Slowinski’s effort is commendable, it occurs to this author that there’s more work to be done, that “mainstream audience” is rather a broad thing.

To that end, I’ve started a storm in my brain — one that has yielded some brief characterizations of the sabermetric project intended for very specific audiences.

What follows is certainly not an exhaustive list. To that end, if you, the reader, request advice on reaching out to a specific audience, do not hesitate to make note of it in the comments section. Alternatively, if you’ve had some success in communicating with one or more kinds of people the nature of the sabermetric project, certainly do provide this sort of infomation.

With that said, here’s how to speak sabermetrics…

To Your Grandmother
You use the computer for baseball, Grandma. Don’t worry about it.

To an Actuary
It’s like what you do, divided by boring.

To an Italian Person
You apply-a the scientific method-a to baseball-a.

To Ted Danson
Ted Frigging Danson, how you doin’, guy?*

*It’s obvious: you can’t just launch into a sabermetric discussion with Ted Danson.

To Someone Much Larger Than You and Maybe Also Drunk
If you want to believe that “Jeter Rules!” I have no intention of separating you from that opinion.

Texas Ranger starter C.J. Wilson suggested today via Twitter not only that (a) he’s occasionally frustrated by the questions he’s asked by reporters but that (b) he’d entertain the possibility of giving fictional answers in the future.

Fortunately, NotGraphs literally specializes in the very important field of fictional answer-giving.

Below are some questions that Wilson either has received or could expect to receive, all with answers taken directly from a most unlikely source — i.e. David Berman’s first and only book of poems Actual Air.

Regard:

Q. How does a pitcher have to act to become a true ace?

A. So dull that he only makes a brief appearance in his own life story.

Q. How’d you feel out there today?

A. Like a turtle tangled up in dry cleaning bag.

Q. What’s been the key to your transition from relieving to starting?

A. A wedding ring with an on/off switch.

Q. How does your cut fastball look to opposing batters, do you think?

A. Like rain in its original, uncut form.

Q. What do you like to do with your free time?

A. Rank the great shipwrecks.

He’s Chip Caray, and he approves this message.

Though the consequences of it aren’t entirely agreed upon, it’s obvious enough that at least some kind of bias exists in the classification of batted-ball types that informs stats like UZR and xFIP. This is natural enough: in any case where a human element is introduced, things are bound to suffer. (Just ask FanGraphs’ Dave Allen!) Given the altitude of a press box or the angle at which said press box is situated behind home plate, the trajectory of a batted-ball might be difficult to adjudge. Also, owing to some curious hiring practices, the people who classify these things are frequently drunk or blind or both.

As in other areas of baseball-related research, FanGraphs is keenly interested in reducing the error bars on this particular type of information. Accordingly, we’re taking steps to deal with the present biases in classification — namely, by devising more (and more narrowly defined) batted-ball types. Given the relative paucity of our current classifications (just ground ball, liner, fly ball), there exist large swaths of grey area. Our hope is to reduce — if not entirely eradicate — this grey area.

Below is a working list of 10 classifications we’d like to introduce sooner than later.

• Can of Corn — A very catchable fly ball.

• Can of Organic Corn — A very catchable fly ball at San Francisco’s AT&T Park.

• Duck Snort — A batted-ball type that only occurs in Hawk Harrelson’s mind.

• Fist — Like a flare, but way more disgusting.

• Flare — A ball hit just past the infield, but neither a line drive nor a fly nor a fliner nor a flounder (i.e. what would happend if a fly and grounder had a baby).

• Frozen Rope — A very well-hit line drive.

• Klickitat — A sort of ground ball hit to the back part of the infield and which you might call a line drive if you were in a different mood. (This is in honor the Klickitat tribe — a Native American group of the Pacific Northwest who had, by some accounts, upwards of 28 different classifications for batted-balls.)

• Nubber — A weakly hit ground ball. Also, a good name for a dog.

• Partially Thawed Rope — Like a frozen rope, except less glorious.

• Squib — I think you know.